Taos Mountain in northern New Mexico. Photo by Lochaven via Flickr
Indian Country Today publishes the first installments in a series by independent journalist Mary Annette Pember. Here she shares the story of Native family whose members are dealing with the fallout from sex trafficking, drugs and gangs:
The Ojibwe family woke to a terrific banging in the middle of the night, and then the door of their tiny, homemade bungalow on the outskirts of Taos burst open. “Does Naivara’s mom live here?” one of several men loudly demanded. Shocked, a woman we’ll refer to as Kai nodded wordlessly, as her 4- and 8-year-old grandchildren, Naivara’s children, cried in fear. (As with Kai, Naivara is not her real name; her family requested that all names be changed.) The men, gang members, dumped Kai’s 32-year-old daughter on the floor and abruptly left. Naivara was unconscious and her skin was blue—she was in the midst of a heroin overdose. Kai got her to a hospital just in time for doctors to save her. The men who dumped Naivara that night had trafficked her for sex in exchange for drugs, but apparently no longer had any use for her in this condition. However, once she recovered soon after she returned to ‘the life.’ In Santa Fe, that means living in hotels along Cerrillos Avenue that advertise low rates. She sold herself for $43.00, the cost of the room; she’d sell herself again for heroin. Over and over each day, the selling and the using, though if she got it backwards she’d sometimes wind up in debt to the gangs for her drugs. Then they demanded payment by any means necessary. They took her to other cities to work off her debt through prostitution. The locations are a blur to her now. As she has done so many times before, Naivara disappeared after her overdose without explanation. Kai returned to her life, busying herself with raising her grandchildren while she was pursuing her dream of earning a college degree. “I didn’t really plan to be raising kids again at age 56,” she laughed wryly.Get the Story:
Mary Annette Pember: Living the Life: Little Girls Don’t Daydream of Being Prostitutes (Indian Country Today 2/17)
Mary Annette Pember: Battle at Home: Traditional Spirit v. Addiction Spirit (Indian Country Today 2/17)
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